


To Save a Life

by MonstrousRegiment



Category: Shame (2011), Wanted (2008)
Genre: B-day, Dealing With Trauma, Friendship, Gen, LicensetoCreep, and being consistently assholish, two assholes helping each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 09:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonstrousRegiment/pseuds/MonstrousRegiment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley Gibson, post the events of Wanted, moves to the sleek apartment he inherits from his dead father. His new neighbor, Brandon Sullivan, has issues. Wes is pretty sure he gets the cake on issues, because it's not every day you run into someone who can honestly tell you they shot their own father in the face, but Brandon doesn't have it easy, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Save a Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SatanInACroptop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SatanInACroptop/gifts).



Wes’ father, as it turned out, had left him a fortune. Wes was at loathe to use it after what had happened, but amongst the many things Life had recently taught him was that beggars can’t be choosers. So he took the money, took the scripture to his brand-new New York apartment, took his few possessions, and dragged himself over. 

The apartment was… a revelation. He would have expected something Spartan to the point of being sterile, but that wasn’t what he found. His father had _lived_ here. 

That only added to all the trauma he was determinately kicking to the back burner, because God, dealing with those would require alcohol in an amount equal to the Atlantic ocean or, alternatively, lots of assholes to shoot. 

It was entirely possible there weren’t enough assholes in the world, and Wes would have leaned towards large amounts of whiskey in any case, but his father hadn’t been a drinker, apparently, and there was literally nothing inside the sleek brushed-steel double-door fridge except a bottle of cold water. 

So Wes devoted some time to snooping around, looking at stuff, picking up things and leaving them back where they were, then returning, picking them up and putting them down again. 

His father had had several pictures of Wes as he grew up, which was sad and creepy at the same time. Wes wasn’t sure, yet, how he felt about this whole fucking mess. Sloan was dead, and that was good, it felt right to have shot that bullet into him—but it didn’t change the fact he’d made Wes kill his own dad. It certainly didn’t fucking change the fact his dad was dead, and Fox, and all the others. 

In the grand scheme of things, after everything that had happened, Wes hadn’t come out on top. Not really. His life was different, but as to whether it was better or not, that was yet to be determined—and despite his fortune and this amazing apartment and the other stuff his dad had left him (a car, a boat, a vacation house in Italy, what the fuck) Wes didn’t know what to do with himself. 

He started by the little things. Shrugged off his dad’s jacket, got a box, started piling in things he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave lying around. In a lot of ways he wanted to get to know the man that had been hiding in the shadows for so many years looking out for him, but it was painful, after what had happened. 

Maybe eventually. 

Some things he was definitely getting rid of, though—mostly old clothes and stuff that didn’t fit him. His dad had been much taller, apparently. He kept the jackets and coats; most of them were really good quality, and he could get the ones that didn’t fit him fixed so they would. He was past the days of cheap windbreaker jackets in any case. 

He was out of cigarettes too—a habit he had recently, he thought justifiably, picked up—so he decided to take the box down himself instead of putting it in the trash room for the janitor. In any case, these weren’t things that had to go to the trash; maybe some tall homeless guy could benefit from them. They were good quality at least. He’d put them out in the street and let luck at them. 

There was a tall dainty-looking blond woman waiting for the elevator on his floor. Wes knew better than to assume things anymore, but at a first glance she looked like a trophy wife. Well-maintained, too, he thought, and chided himself for an asshole. 

Before, Wesley Gibson had been a nice person. Once upon a time. 

He tilted his head at her in greetings and then proceeded to stare determinately at the brush-steel doors of the elevator. Was everything in this fucking building brushed-steel? Was that some kind of paranoid design choice? 

_How did I even end up here?_ Wes pulled a face at his reflection in the metal, looking at the shadowed ghosts of bruises and cuts on his face. They were fading, slowly, slowly. Sometimes it felt like maybe one day he’d even feel normal; and then at night he’d lay in bed and remember the sound of Fix’s body, limp, hitting the ground. 

No. Probably not. 

The elevator doors dinged open. Wes gestured for the woman to go first, since he was not beyond manners, and then followed her and took care to stand at appropriate but not conversation-inviting distance. See? Wes had _people skills_. 

“Hold it, please,” a voice called out form the hallway just as the doors began to slide closed. Wes kicked his foot out the door and balanced on his other leg, somewhat undignified, but whatever. The guy that came into the elevator with them was carrying what looked like an insane amount of garbage bags full of, possibly, paper or magazines. 

Idly, amused, Wes wondered if the guy was throwing out all his porn magazines, to make room for the new ones. Who even kept porn magazines anymore? The internet was the blessing of the perverts. 

But trophy-wife-lady seemed to be much more comfortable with bags-guy than with Wesley, and she even smiled at him. Bags-guy was tall, rake-thin, and looked like in the last week he’d been eaten, chewed, swallowed, and then vomited, and he’d not yet quite gotten over the ensuing trauma. The smile was completely lost on him. 

“Spring cleaning?” she asked, winsome. 

Bags-guy glanced down at his many bags, a little miserable frown etching between his brows. Wes found that odd. The man did look like shit, on closer inspection. Maybe he was sick or something. 

“Something like that,” he said quietly. 

“A little early, isn’t it?” the woman grinned, amiable. 

Bags-guy looked seriously troubled. 

“It’s good to start early,” she offered, batting a hand as if to assuage his concerns. Bags-guy did not look placated. He looked _torn_. Personally, Wes couldn’t see what the deal was. It wasn’t like he was making a huge life-changing decision. It was just fucking spring cleaning. What, had he lost a cushion he was personally, sentimentally attached to?

What speed did this fucking elevator move at?

“I’m,” bags-guy hesitated, conflicted. His eyes darted to Wes, who arched his brows, unimpressed. He could stop talking any minute now. Wes really didn’t give a fuck about this whole conversation, or his bags, or whether he wound up fucking trophy-wife in the elevator once Wes got out. Just as long as they didn’t get anything on the walls. 

“I’m a sex addict,” he came up with, for some god-forsaken reason. It sounded like he was testing out the words, like—he was putting them out there, outside of himself, for the first time. Like maybe he felt that letting _other people_ know would make it more real for himself. 

The woman recoiled, eyes wide. 

Wes’ eyebrows hit his hairline. This was the fucking longest elevator ride in the history of humankind. This elevator was slower than a snail. The ride was longer than an audio-book of _War & Peace. _

Wes realized sex-addict guy was now looking at him. And answer of some sort might be required. 

“Hmm,” he offered. That didn’t seem to be sufficient. He tried again. “Aha.”

Maybe some more. 

“I uh, didn’t know that existed,” he said, in what sounded to him like a perfectly conversational tone of voice. 

Sex-addict seemed to take offense to this, and frowned. 

“It does,” he gritted out. 

Wes was not about to be bullied by a neighbor on his first day in this fucking apartment building. 

“Maybe you’re just a dick,” he replied, grinning. 

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Wes stepped out, and gamely clutched one of sex-addict’s bags, smiling genially. No reason not to be civilized, after all. 

“Here, let me help you get rid of all your porn,” he said, quietly enough only the two of them would hear, since trophy-wife was scurrying quickly away from them. She probably thought they were psychopaths. She was probably right. 

Sex-addict’s jaw set firm, but he didn’t say anything as Wes easily carried the bag—heavy, by the way—to the street and around to the alley, where he dumped it in the trash container. He even held the door open for his neighbor to drop the rest of his shit in. 

And then they stood there, staring at each other, silent. 

Wes bent down to sit his box by the trash container, in a dry patch of pavement. When he straightened sex-addict guy was still there. 

Wes felt a little like a gesture of good-will was in order. He gestured at the container. 

“That’s actually good, you know,” he offered, conciliatory. “That you’re dealing with it.” 

The guy dragged a hand down his haggard face, exhaling. 

“I’m trying.” 

“It’s a start. I’m Wesley Gibson, from 17-B.”

“Brandon Sullivan, 17-A.” 

They shook hands. Everyone here was a gentleman. Nothing about sex-addiction or being a murderer around here, no sir. 

Sullivan looked torn again, so Wesley figured something awful and uncomfortable was about to come out of his thin mouth. 

“I might come onto you at some point.”

Wes arched his brows. “I’m straight.”

“So am I,” Sullivan said helplessly. 

“I might punch you in the face.” 

“It’s been done.”

“I’ll punch you harder.” 

“You don’t know how hard it was the first time,” Sullivan replied, and Wes saw a glimmer of humor in his steel-grey eyes. 

“Trust me, mine’ll be harder,” Wes assured him, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Anyway, man, good luck.”

Sullivan nodded, waved his hand, and got back around to the building. Wes walked around the block looking for a place to buy cigarettes, which took about forty minutes, then sat down at some diner to eat. The rest of the day was unremarkable. 

Sleep that night came in fits and starts. He wasn’t used to the sounds of this building, to the low murmur of the elevator, the caress of wind on the windows. It was strange and alien. Every little shift in air pressure startled him awake. Finally he rose at mid-morning, took a shower, and spent the day looking for what he knew had to be hidden somewhere; a compartment where guns were kept. 

His father did not disappoint him; he found a double-back in his bedroom closet. Behind it was another secret room, more organized than the other one, and what was a solid armory. Wes appreciated it. He didn’t want to have to use them, but some things once broken can’t be fixed. Wes knew he’d never be able to go back to a normal life, to _accounting_ or some such bullshit. 

There was still a Loom of Fate in Moravia, birthplace of the Fraternity. Some monsters still deserved to be killed. Wesley had been getting the little packets from Pekwarski, the small little pieces of cloth that he could translate if only he cared to sit down and do it. 

He remembered Fox’s story. _You kill one, save maybe thousands._

Wes’ father had tried to keep him safe—but he’d failed. And now Wes had changed. That, also, was fate. 

He spent that day in the workroom, cleaning and oiling the guns, making sure they were in perfect working order. In the evening he laid in his couch, smoked, and watched a terribly stupid movie. Then he went to bed. 

He was jerked awake at the ungodly hour of 4 am by the doorbell. Fishing a gun from under the mattress, he approached the door but stayed against the wall, clear of the line of fire. 

“Who is it?” he called out, reading the gun. 

A moment of apparent hesitation. 

“It’s um, Sullivan. From 17-A. We met the other day.” 

Wes blinked, straightened. He considered putting the gun on the guy, but Sullivan looked like the world had spit him out already, the last thing he needed was a muzzle on his face. Besides, if it came down to it, he was sticks and skin; Wes could take him out without breaking a sweat. What did he even want, anyway? Wes _should_ shoot him for waking him up at this hour, fucking Christ. 

“Uh, gimme a minute,” he mumbled, shoving the gun on what looked like a sweets-bowl—what the fuck, dad—and unlocking the door. 

Sullivan was wearing jeans a white t-shirt, barefoot, and he looked like he hadn’t slept or, for that matter, eaten, in days. His eyes traveled, seemingly uncontrolled, across Wes’ nearly-naked body. 

“Is this a relapse?” Wes asked, unimpressed. “Because I told you I’m straight.” 

Sullivan raked his thin fingers through his short hair. “I know. I—I just… that’s why I’m here. I need…”

Wes frowned slightly. “The urge, huh?” he asked, soft. “It’s like you need another fix of a drug, isn’t it.”

“It’s exactly like that. And I know you won’t… so I was wondering if you could—keep an eye on me. For a little while.”

“It’s four fucking am, Sullivan.” 

“I know,” the man looked desperate. “I’m sorry.”

Wes stared at him. Sullivan looked like a skeleton. 

“Fine. Whatever. Just keep your cock in your fucking pants. And I’m gonna need coffee for this bullshit.”

Sullivan slipped inside, tense and stiff, eyeing the apartment like a whore might spring at him from a corner and fuck him or something. 

“You know where the kitchen is,” Wes said, shoving him in that direction. “Start on that coffee. I’m gonna get some clothes on. I can’t fucking believe this is happening.”

“I love what you’ve done with this place. I wouldn’t have taken you for a tapestry kind of guy,” the guy said from the direction of the kitchen, sounding amused. 

“Shut the fuck up and make coffee, Sullivan,” Wes yelled back. Then he muttered “How is this my life, what the fuck did I do to deserve this asshole? Was it because I was a loser for so long, huh? Now I get to babysit some dick that can’t keep it in his pants, is that it?”

He straightened, pulling his jeans brusquely up, and paused, shoulder slumping. 

“Well,” he said, passing a hand roughly down his face. “Now I’m just being a piece of shit.” 

He stared at his father’s jacket, the worn leather he’d cleaned and cared for just this morning. His father had wanted a different life for him, peaceful, quiet, safe. He couldn’t give it to him in the end. But he’d also wanted Wesley to be a better person than himself, someone who did good things. 

Brandon Sullivan wasn’t such a bad place to start helping whoever he could, was it? He was asking for it, after all. That took some balls. 

“Fine,” he breathed out, putting a t-shirt on. He finished doing his jeans, got shoes, put a sweater on. He looked as masculine and unapproachable as he could manage, what with his baby-blues and stupidly red mouth. “And if he tries anything,” he added to himself. “I am _not_ going to punch him in the face. Because I’m not an animal. I can be civilized. Unless he burnt the coffee—then I gut him. I reserve that right.” 

+++

Sullivan never strayed from the areas in the apartment Wes had confined him to: the kitchen, the living room, the hall, the bathroom. Never once did he attempt to go into the bedroom, or the study. 

Wes had expected him to chafe against limitations, but if anything, Sullivan seemed to appreciate them. Wes wondered if this whole sex-addiction thing hadn’t been born from a lack of boundaries in the first place. 

He never went to Sullivan’s apartment, because unlike Sullivan, Wes didn’t need a fucking babysitter, and besides, Sullivan never offered. Wes figured this was a habit of leading what Sullivan described as a ‘double-life’, which Wes thought was completely stupid, but the way. 

Wes knew how to look at someone and know what they were about, now. Sullivan probably had some kind of well-paying office job he was tremendously good at. He led an obviously ascetic life, devoid of any comfort or excess. He bowed to the style people expected him to have; nice elegant clothes, a probably clean, modern and well-decorated apartment, a clean-shaven moderately handsome face and careful short hair. He was fit; he exercised and ate healthy and he didn’t smoke and when he drunk, he drunk the appropriate amount. 

If there had been some sort of sketch on how to live your life that you had to paint, Brandon Sullivan sure as fuck painted inside the lines. Brandon Paint-by-Numbers Sullivan. 

Wes could relate, a little, which—endeared him to the poor bastard, in a way. 

He figured he probably got to see Sullivan at his worst, because the man didn’t knock on his door unless he was desperate and needed someone to verbally slap him around a bit which, okay, Wes could do. 

He never asked Sullivan _who he was_ , or _what he wanted from life_ , because he didn’t want to destroy the man. Wes knew a thing or two about reconstructing yourself, and he could tell Sullivan would just break down and lie like shards of glass on the floor. 

Wes had his own life to deal with in. As the weeks went by, Wes found he was ill-suited for leisure. He’d grown restless and impatient, too active to lay in wait anymore. He saw life going on outside his window and could not, _would not_ , let it slip by between his fingers. Never again. 

Eventually he sat down and decoded the pieces of cloth. Contacted the researchers for the Fraternity. He readied his guns again, and in a cold winter morning left his apartment with murder in mind. 

That night he didn’t sleep well. When morning came and he found himself more tired than the night before as he’d gone to bed, he knew to be thankful for that. He’d killed a bad man who deserved to die, but that didn’t make it any less a murder. He’d taken a life. Whatever the fuck Fate had to say about it, Wes still felt guilty and jaded about the whole thing. 

He put the other pieces of cloth away, feeling like he couldn’t deal with them, but in the end, pulled them out again. _You kill one, save maybe thousands._

Maybe that had been the whole problem to begin with. Wes had liked Fox, genuinely liked her, but she was cold-blooded and remorseless. She would have put a bullet through him just as soon as taken him to bed. A life was a life; no matter how it was lived, ending it was supposed to feel _wrong_. Wes knew it was possible he felt this way because of what he had gone through. He remembered his father’s face as he shot him; the pain, the betrayal but more than anything, the sadness. _He wanted a different life for you._

Fate had taken out its own soldiers, and Wes had to wonder why. Was it because they had become machines, and no longer saw their targets as people anymore? Because to them it was just one more bulls-eye in the firing range, one more game, one less chore? 

But fate still did need its mistakes to be fixed… so now it all fell on Wes’ reluctant shoulders. He had enough money to do it, of course—Pekwarski was sending him money for his targets anyway, even if he _had_ needed it. 

Maybe that’s what fate needed—to put this responsibility on someone who didn’t want it but knew it must be done. Maybe that was how it _had_ to be. 

The Fraternity was gone and all that was left was one Wesley Gibson. So he put on his big-boy pants, sat down, and decoded the rest of the cloth pieces. Forwarded the names. Started making his research on his targets. 

Names had unfortunately piled up. Wes had no way of knowing what kind of awful things this bunch of psychopaths could be doing if he didn’t get _on_ this, so he threw himself completely into it. Into the hunt, into the killing. 

And when it all got too much and he felt like he could never wash the blood off his hands, he took a moment to go back to the small dingy apartment his father had lived in to watch out for him every day. His father, who had truly _believed_ in the Loom of Fate and what it asked of him. 

Sitting there in the cold of Chicago one afternoon he picked up his phone and called Pekwarski. 

“What was he like?’ he asked immediately. 

Pekwarski was silent for a moment. 

“Calm,” he answered at length. “And warm. A good man.” 

Wes hung up. He’d thought he was ready, but he couldn’t deal with it. 

When he got home the day after, he realized he’d been away for a week and a half and he hadn’t even thought of warning Sullivan. Feeling a little guilty, he showered and changed and got himself down to Sullivan’s door, and knocked. 

The man looked haggard and tired. 

“Christ, Gibson,” he said, frowning. “I thought something had happened to you.”

“Nah, you can’t kill me, I’m like weed.”

Sullivan dragged a hand through his hair. He was wearing a pressed shirt and slacks this time; he’d probably gone back to work, then. Well, that mysterious license couldn’t last forever. 

“So, how have things been?” Wes asked, shoving his hands into his pockets. Sullivan didn’t invite him in, but whatever. Wes didn’t do well with fucking polite pleasantries anymore. “Fuck anyone while I was gone?”

Sullivan gritted his teeth, but then the anger seemed to drain away from him, as if he were too tired to even attempt to hold it. He shook his head. 

“Well, look at that,” Wes grinned. “I’m so _proud_ of you.”

He reached over and slapped Sullivan in the arm. The older man gave him a cold look, but it wasn’t like a look could intimidate Wesley Gibson, gifted killer, hit-man extraordinaire, soldier of Fate. 

“Do you even have a cell phone?” Sullivan asked, giving him a critical look. 

“Sure I have a cell phone, asshole, I’m not an animal,” Wes flipped him the finger, because he knew Sullivan hated childish shit. Exactly as he had expected, the man gave him an unimpressed, flat look, and took out his super-sleek Iphone 4 fancy little toy. Wes had the impulse to knock it out of his hands, to see how Sullivan reacted. 

He’d probably just stare at him, then bend down and grab it and say nothing. Paint-by-Numbers Sullivan. 

He reached over and flicked the phone. It tumbled easily to the floor from Sullivan’s lose hold. The sound it did when it hit the floor was loud in the deserted hallway. 

Sullivan stared at him, speechless. Then, true to character, he reached down and went to pick it up. Wes could have kicked it away, or stepped on it, or any number of other things that could provoke Sullivan. He wanted the man to snap out of this stupid numbness he’d induced himself into. But maybe anger wasn’t the way with Sullivan, and if it wasn’t, then Wes would only hurt him for no good reason. So he let him pick it up, and grinned like an asshole when Sullivan arched a brow at him. 

“Just mindless, stupid vandalism?” Sullivan asked, not amused. 

“If it were mindless and stupid I would’ve missed,” Wes replied, as if this was perfectly obvious. He gave the man his phone number, and then left because he could tell Sullivan needed sleep as soon as possible. He wondered what Sullivan did to hold his urges when Wes wasn’t around. He wondered if masturbating was considered a fix or a decompression technique. Obviously he wasn’t about to ask. 

They resumed their strange routine, though Sullivan seemed to be making an effort and curbing some of the urges on his own. He only came to Wes when he was seriously desperate, but, very wisely, not _once_ tried to come onto him. Wes had promised himself if and when it happened, he couldn’t bodily hurt the man, but his face probably spoke volumes and the threat of that first day seemed to have lingered in Sullivan’s mind. 

“What do you do for a living, anyway?” Sullivan asked one morning. He was lying on the couch in the living room, sprawled out in a strangely careless way, completely relaxed, it seemed, in Wesley’s company. 

Wes himself was sitting in the ground, smoking and sketching, or rather doodling, in a notebook. It took him a moment to realize he’d been trying to get Fox’s eyes right. The next second the notebook was flying across the living room. 

Sullivan sat up, startled. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think it—“

“It wasn’t the question,” Wes mumbled around his cigarette. He threw the pen after the notebook, irritated. “It was a shitty fucking drawing. I inherited a fortune. Now I’m trying to fix all the shit my dad left behind.”

There. True enough. 

Sullivan looked appropriately sad for Wes’ loss, and unfortunately this was a bad night for Sullivan to be politically correct. Wes was tired, and irritated, and fucking angry at himself for missing Fox, who’d very willingly tried to put a bullet through him like he was a piece of meat. A toy that had outlived its usefulness. 

“ _Fuck_ your sentiments,” he said viciously. “You don’t know a fucking thing about my dad, or about me, so you don’t fucking _feel sorry_ at all. Not your loss. So shut up about how sorry you are about it.”

Sullivan was very still for a moment, steel-grey eyes wide. He looked like he had something caught in his throat, but Wes couldn’t tell whether it was a scream, a curse or a sob. Sullivan did that sometimes, sit quietly and cry. It was creepy as hell. Wes never knew what the fuck to do when he got like that, so he just sat there with him and tried not to fuck things up even more for the poor bastard. Surprisingly, he’d discovered that was _just_ what Sullivan needed; someone to sit nearby and not judge him. 

“I never asked you about yourself, did I,” Sullivan said finally, quiet. 

Wes shrugged. “If you’d asked, I would’ve told you to fuck off.”

“That’s your standard response to anything I ask.”

“But you keep coming around like a kicked puppy anyway.” 

Sullivan never smiled at Wesley. He never felt like smiling, and he didn’t _pretend_ when he was in this apartment. Wes thought Sullivan felt liberated for it. He didn’t care. Sullivan had a creepy sort of smile. “Because you don’t apologize about anything.” 

“I’m done doing that,” Wes sighed, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. 

_You apologize too much._

Fucking Fox. 

Wes got up and picked up his dad’s old jacket, kicking Sullivan in the ankle. “Get up, loser, we’re going for a walk.” 

“It’s thirty degrees out there, Gibson,” the older man retorted. But he got up, because when you told Sullivan to do something and used a sufficiently authoritarian tone, you could normally bully him with depressing ease. 

They spent the rest of the night walking idly through the streets of New York, silent, side-by-side. They watched the sun rise over the river. Once or twice they caught the eye of some unfortunate down-on-his-luck criminal, but Wesley knew how to look like the bigger wolf in the woods. 

“I’m trying,” Sullivan said, leaning on the railing, withdrawn and subdued.

“I know.”

Sullivan shook his head slowly. “It’s my sister. She needs me and… I can’t—give it to her. What she needs.”

Wes glanced sidelong at him. “You have a sister? Never mentioned her.” 

“She’s in a clinic.” 

There was nothing to say to that. Or there was, if Wes was feeling polite, which he was not. 

“What happened to her?” he asked, lighting a cigarette. The trick with Sullivan was asking him things like you didn’t give a fuck about his answers. If he wanted to tell you, then let that be his business. Wes didn’t judge any of his answers, anyway, and he knew the man could tell. Wes was beyond social fucking conventions. 

Sometimes it felt like he was beyond this whole fucking thing. Drama. Life. 

But there were good things, sometimes, too. Sullivan wasn’t always a depressed asshole, for one. Sometimes he was even funny. 

He didn’t get an answer. 

He also didn’t see Sullivan for the next three days, which could be either a good thing or a hint that everything had gone to hell. Wes couldn’t spare the time to knock on his door and offer his shoulder for the man to fucking cry on every night, though, and he liked to think Sullivan was a big boy and could deal with his own shit for a few days. 

Most of the time, he’d learned, when Sullivan was desperate and Wes wasn’t around, the man went out running until he dropped. The endorphins rush helped, maybe. 

Pekwarski came to visit at the beginning of spring, six months after Wes had moved to his new apartment. 

“I wish I could ask you to stop this,” he said in his thin accented voice, always so sad. 

“There’s no one else,” Wes replied. “And _someone_ has to do it. You know that better than anyone.”

Pekwarski moved a hand slowly, as if encompassing that knowledge and the melancholy of its acceptance. Pekwarski had also wanted a different life for Wesley. Well—nobody in this book ever got what they wanted. 

“You ought to start a new Fraternity.”

Wes sprawled out in his couch. “It’s not like I have all the time of the world. I have people to kill. Besides, I think the whole reason the Loom killed the Fraternity off was they were a bunch of sociopaths.” 

“Then you mist not train children.”

“That was fucked up anyway,” Wes mumbled, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Who even does that, Christ.”

Pekwarksi didn’t answer. Wes’s phone suddenly started vibrating. His researchers sometimes called him if they got a new lead or something, so Wes always had it on him. He glanced at the screen. 

Sullivan. Huh. 

“This is a surprise,” he said, when he answered. Sullivan hadn’t called him once in the two months he’d had his number. 

A pause. A shaky breath. 

Wes sat up, alarmed. 

“Sullivan?”

A muffled sob. 

“Fuck,” Wes closed his eyes, feeling cold. “Where are you?”

Sullivan gave him the address, voice thin and shaky. 

“Stay there, I’m coming.”

Pekwarski arched his brows at him. 

“A friend?”

“Close enough that I owe him this,” Wes answered, snatching up his jacket. He shrugged it on, found his pistol, checked the chamber, slid it in his jeans. Sullivan was probably not hurt or in trouble, but if he was, Wesley would be ready to get him out. Pekwarski watched him prepare, idle and patient, attentive. 

Wes paused. 

“Pekwarski,” he asked softly. “How do you help someone when they don’t even know how to help themselves?”

The Moravian did that creepy slow-blink thing he did when he was thinking. _Loading, loading._

“You stay close,” he said at length. 

“Yeah,” Wes sighed. “I was afraid you were gonna say that.” 

+++

The first real relapse, then, took six months, which was far better than Wes would have given anyone credit for. 

This was not a comfort for Sullivan, who went around life moping like someone had rained of his fucking parade all the time. 

Wes had figured he’d fall back into all habits eventually, what with being a recovering addict, but the emotional devastation this idiot was handling right now suggested maybe _he_ hadn’t. Wes wasn’t sure he understood this, and wondered if maybe there was something behind this whole thing he was completely missing. Something about the sister Sullivan never wanted to talk about, or the family he never even mentioned. Sullivan was Irish by birth, and still even had a bit of an accent, but mention Ireland and suddenly he was an ice statue. 

This really was way too much drama for Wes, who had how own shit to deal on top of it all and was well-known for his lack of patience for bullshit. And yet—whenever Sullivan knocked on his door, Wes got up and fucking opened it. 

Wes did a lot of bad things on a daily basis, but he didn’t lie to himself. Sullivan might be fucked up, but if they were talking about fucked up, Wes was relatively certain he got the cake, because Sullivan didn’t look like he could handle a gun to save his life so the possibility of him having shot his own fucking father was pretty low. 

Wes also didn’t lie to himself about what this was. He didn’t need Sullivan to keep him on the right track about his life decisions, but all in all, Sullivan was a pretty normal, regular guy. Wes needed someone like that in his life, too, though maybe someone not addicted to something might have been a better idea. The fact they almost never left the building together also kept Sullivan safe; when someone, and it was when not if, _when_ someone came for Wesley, they wouldn’t think of shooting Sullivan in the eye. 

It was good that someone reminded Wesley that life outside his personal little alternative universe still flowed. Not everyone was a monster, not everyone was a killer. Some people just had normal people issues. 

Maybe not Sullivan, though. 

“You threw out your laptop?” Wes gave him a look. “Why the hell did you do that?”

Sullivan, dressed today in a dark t-shirt and running pants and looking like he’d been involved in a hit-and-run and the driver was Life, gave him a tired look. 

“You couldn’t just use parental control? Drama queen.”

Wes was cooking. Wes was actually a pretty good fucking cook, and he thought Sullivan ought to feel privileged to get to eat his food, especially since the only reason he cooked it was that he had to cook for two because the asshole hardly ate unless you reminded him he sort of needed to. Unfortunately, Sullivan ate like a fucking robot, because apparently food was also not on the list of things that gave him some joy. 

Sullivan was also, by the way, still moping. Wes figured it had to do with the fact he’d maybe disappointed himself by relapsing on his addiction. He didn’t know if there was something he could tell the man to comfort him, and if there was, he didn’t have it. Wes wasn’t good at comfort; revenge, sure, but comfort, well. 

“It wouldn’t have been enough.”

Wes hummed in agreement, steering sauce. This was a fucking culinary piece of art right here. 

Sullivan glanced to the side and picked up the postcard Pekwarski had sent Wes about the vacation house in Italy. He was staying there for a couple of weeks, presumably hoping Wes would join him and take a break from his life. Pekwarski very obviously wanted to worry about Wes, and make sure he was alright. Wes had no idea how to deal with that, so mostly he didn’t. 

“Italy?” Sullivan asked, squinting at the postcard. 

“My dad has a house there,” Wes said. He didn’t mumble. He fucking mumbled too much. Instead he leaned over and picked up his cigarette, took a long drag. 

Alarm bells were obviously ringing through the older man’s head, because he looked wary. This subject was very clearly one of the things Wes Did Not Discuss. Wes had never actually thrown him out, though a couple of time he’s been severely tempted. He hadn’t, because he could tell Sullivan was leaning a lot on him, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that if he turned his back the guy would possibly relapse again. He didn’t look like he could handle that. 

Maybe there hadn’t been a trigger the first time. Maybe Sullivan had just been tired and lonely and away from home and he’d slipped. Slipping was what addicts did. But trigger or not, Wes still felt a little guilty about that. Sullivan had asked him for help to prevent that from happening, and Wes hadn’t even noticed he was getting worse. 

Then again, figuring out things were getting worse for Sullivan was like shooting at a target on a moving horse, while on a different horse that is also moving. It wasn’t like he submitted status reports.

This whole mess was misplaced guilt anyway. There was no reason Wes had to feel responsible for Sullivan. There were, on the other hand, tons of reasons Wes should feel guilty about his father’s death, or Fox’s. And he hadn’t dealt with any of _those,/i >, yet. Maybe because Sullivan’s own issues were so easy to look in the face, as opposed to his own. _

“Pekwarski,” Sullivan read aloud, curious. 

“My dad’s,” Wes waved a hand. “whatever. Executor. Something like that.” 

Sullivan had that awful expression that preceded one of his even more awful confessions. Wes hoped it wasn’t about another threesome, because that had been sad all around the first time. 

“How did he die?”

Oh. Huh. 

Wes blinked, looking down at the sauce. Sullivan really did never ask about Wes. Mostly, Wes didn’t care, because half the things a normal person would ask he couldn’t answer. But again, Sullivan wasn’t always an asshole; and on some level, for some God-forsaken reason, Wes could tell the older man did worry about him. He thought Wes was younger than he really was, and on a good day, Sullivan gave him these _looks_ , like he thought he should say something about Wes’ attitude, like some sort of uncle Wes had decided to adopt. Unlike Pekwarski, he backed off when Wes glared at him. Unfortunately, as they spent more time together Sullivan cared more and backed off less. 

Sometimes, Wes thought Sullivan was giving him a lot of things he should have been giving his sister. But then, the sister was still gone, and Wes was around, and if Sullivan needed someone to coddle, whatever. Worse things had happened to Wesley. Much worse. 

“Well,” he said finally. “That’s a long story, Sullivan.” 

“I’m not going anywhere,” the man offered, softly. “You can call me Brandon, by the way.”

Wes liked Sullivan better. It felt like he was telling the guy he was an asshole every time he talked to him, which felt appropriate to Wes—but they were slowly easing into what felt like a somewhat deeper friendship, and Wes knew he couldn’t start stone-walling now, and run away like a high-school girl. Wes had his own commitment issues. 

He shrugged. 

“I had this dad that I sort of liked, and he died,” he said, staring at the stove. “And then someone—“ Fox. Fox’s deep blue eyes, the mocking curl of her mouth. Fucking Fox. “showed up, and told me that wasn’t my dad. My dad was this other guy, who’d just been killed. And then, it turned out, that was a lie—my real father was another guy. That got killed.” _That I killed._

He glanced up. Brandon was white-faced. 

“Those are a lot of daddy issues, huh?” Wes arched a brow. 

“I’m,” Brandon started, then stopped. He was obviously trying not to give his fucking little _sentiments_ that he knew Wes hated. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he settled on, startlingly genuine. 

Wes didn’t have any asshole remark to that. 

“Yeah,” he said, subdued. “Me too.” 

So Wes didn’t lie to himself about shit. He knew what he was doing. He knew he hadn’t saved his dad, or Fox. He knew neither of their deaths was _really_ his fault. But then, neither was Brandon’s addiction. And maybe _him_ , Wes could help. 

+++

Wes had expected another relapse, of course, and he’d promised himself he’d be extra nice to Brandon about it, because he really couldn’t handle another stage of being pathetically depressed about not being able to keep it in his pants. Brandon tended to get repetitive when he was upset. 

Well, men will lay their plans, and God will laugh in their fucking faces. 

The day of Brandon’s second relapse, eight months after Wes had moved into his dad’s apartment, Wes was getting back from a trip to Uganda to kill a dictator wannabe dickhead. He’d gotten some sort of disgusting stomach-flu that he was now finally cured of, but his stomach still roiled sometimes and he hadn’t eaten anything solid in days. His stupid English-complexion skin had burnt like hell, too, and was already fucking peeling. 

So imagine his pleasure when he steps out of the elevator and dainty-trophy-wife-lady—her name was actually Caroline, but whatever—is telling her older-looking husband that the girl 17-A was with was really, really pretty, but poor thing, really, he was—

“He’s a really nice guy,” he growled, glaring savagely at her. He searched for something nice to say about Brandon, but he was tired and his brain was short-circuiting on _girl 17-A was with_. He settled for “And he’s got really good clothes.”

Well, that was lame. 

Wes scoffed and stalked away, stormed into his apartment, threw his bag on his bed, and wondered what he would tell Brandon when the asshole dragged himself over like a dog that had taken a beating. 

He thought, _it’s alright, it happens to everyone, it’s an addiction, you’ll do better now, just take it slow._

Then he thought, _fuck this_ , and stormed right back out his apartment and to Brandon’s door. He figured he ought to give Brandon a chance and not just shoulder his way inside, so he knocked and waited. Then he knocked again. And since the couple from 17-C was gone, he figured _fuck this too_ and started yelling, too. 

The door finally did open, and Brandon stared at him, speechless. 

“Hi,” Wes growled, shoving past him into the apartment. Yes, indeed, there was a girl, half-naked, sprawled out in the couch in the living room. He bent down, picked up her dress and handed it to her. He told himself to be polite; this was not the girl’s fault. It wasn’t Brandon’s fault, either, which was sad. 

“Party’s over,” he said as she scrambled to her feet. 

Brandon grabbed his arm and whirled him around, but just as he did that she seemed to realize what Wes was doing, and stepped back, staggering. 

“Fuck, Brandon,” Wes wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a distillery.”

This was new and troubling. Brandon drank very little and in small amounts. He _hated_ feeling out of control and tipsy. The girl slipped her shoes on and left like her braid was on fire. Wes figured he’d just made a scene, but he could put up with Brandon’s irritated embarrassment better than he could deal with his disappointed moping around. 

Wes didn’t feel like he needed to be exposed to Brandon’s nipples and hard-on, so he grabbed his friend’s shirt and shoved it at him. Brandon was sluggish as he dressed, weighted down by alcohol. Sighing, Wes reached down and picked up Brandon’s slacks and handed them to him. He felt like he’d just been run over by a bulldozer. 

“Come on,” he said when Brandon was dressed. “I obviously need to keep an eye on you. You’re sleeping on my couch tonight.” 

Brandon came over docilely enough, which was unnerving. He didn’t look like he knew what the hell was going on around him. 

Wes left him sitting in the couch in the living room and went to his room to shower and change. He still smelled like airplane recycled air, which he hated. The hot water pummeling his back was a pleasure, and Wes didn’t feel guilty about taking due advantage of it for a very, very long time. The room was full of steam by the time he dried himself off, wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out. 

Brandon was sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning his elbows on his knees. 

Alarm bells started ringing in Wes’ head. He told himself he didn’t need a gun or a knife, not with Brandon—he was fit enough, but physically weak in comparison to himself. He didn’t need a weapon to subdue him. Then he reminded himself this was _Brandon_ , for fuck’s sake, he didn’t need to subdue him at all. The only person Brandon was dangerous for was Brandon. 

“What the fuck, man?” he asked, crossing over to his dresser to yank boxers from the drawer. He had to made this undignified little dance to get them on without flashing his junk at Brandon—he didn’t think the man would appreciate it—but he managed. 

Brandon lifted his head and got to his feet. 

Wes thought _oh fuck, we’re here, aren’t we._

“Why did you stop me?” Brandon asked, quietly, eyes searching. 

“Because you would have wanted me to,” Wes answered, wary. Brandon was very close, and moving closer, and Wes thought _I am not going to punch him in the face_. There had been a lot of whiskey drinking tonight, it seemed, which was bizarre because that wasn’t even Brandon’s drink of choice. 

Wes decided to take this bull by the horns, and grabbed Brandon by the arms and pushed him away, but gently. No need to hurt him. He was obviously very drunk; there was no other reason he would be looking at Wesley like this, not after how clear it was between them that Wes was not interested. 

He wasn’t even angry, he was—too tired for that, maybe. He was just sad and uncomfortable. 

“You need go to bed,” Wes said, turning around to his closet to find a t-shirt. 

Bad idea. Brandon slipped his arms around him and brought him close. Wes gritted his teeth and reminded himself Brandon was not a bad fucking person. Just a wounded one. 

“Get off me, Brandon,” he said steadily, and snatched a t-shirt from the drawer. “I’m not telling you again.” If only he could infuse the tone with the sort of annoyance and warning that made Brandon flinch any other day, things would resolve themselves. Brandon wasn’t scared, exactly, of Wes, but sometimes he did look seriously alarmed at some things, and that ought to be enough. But Wes couldn’t muster it. He just wanted Brandon to leave him alone.

He was breathing in ear. “Don’t you want to try?”

Everything was completely off balance. Wes was tired and shaky, coming down from the adrenaline high of the hunt, jet-lagged, sunburnt and starved. These were the times he hated someone being around him; he was just a kid, at times like this, a little orphan boy, time and time again, betrayed, who shot his own father. 

Brandon was pressed flush all along his back, one hand splayed inviting in Wes’s stomach. Another inch and he’s be touching the band of his underwear. 

Wes couldn’t deal with this. He’d told himself when this happened he’d be unaccommodating but kind, firm—he would hurt Brandon, because Brandon didn’t mean to hurt him, and Wes didn’t attack the innocent. But he was off balance and shaky and—Brandon was too fucking close, when he should know better than to touch Wes, he knew Wes _hated_ being touched—

Brandon’s hand was over his crotch.

He whirled around and shoved Brandon away so hard the man stumbled. Almost immediately, he felt guilty about that, and reached out to grip his wrist and help steady him. Brandon was a very clumsy drunk, funnily. 

“Don’t do this, Brandon,” he said tiredly, letting go. “You know it’s not like that with us. Try to _think_.” 

Brandon smiled suggestively. There was something in his eyes Wes didn’t like. Brandon was manipulative, sometimes, but never cruel, or mean. Insensitive, sure, but not intentionally. And whatever he was about to say was going to be aimed to hurt. 

“I thought I reminded you of your dad a little, and that was what you wanted.”

Absolute silence. 

Wes’ mind blanked out. He told himself, _you won’t hurt him, he’s drunk and broken, he doesn’t mean it_. He told himself, _he’s shown you before that he cares, he’s not himself_. He told himself, _you don’t hurt innocent people_. 

His heart was beating quickly in his chest. He could feel adrenaline gathering, pumping through him, accelerating the rhythm of his breath, making Brandon’s motions look slow; the curl of his mouth, the flutter of his lashes. The way he reached out for Wes again. 

 

Brandon’s back met the wall with a bone-rattling sound and the air was knocked out of him. He struggled to breathe in, but Wes’ arm was across his throat, pressing down. Brandon’s right hand came up to grab at him; Wes gripped his wrist and twisted it down until he whined. 

“Say that again,” he sneered right into Brandon’s panicked face, staring at his wild eyes. “Go on. Tell me about my dad, and how you know everything about what I fucking feel about him.” He shook him roughly, violently. “You’re _nothing_ like my dad. You could wish you were like him, you—“

Fuck. _Fuck_.

Wes stepped away like he’d just burned himself. Brandon was bent over, coughing. Wes left him there and stormed to the kitchen, shaky with fury and horror, panicked. 

This couldn’t be fucking happening _now_. It was like the thin veneer of—of whatever, calm or something like it, whatever the fuck this was that he’d built like a dome over all the—shit he should have dealt with long ago, that thin crust, the frozen surface of the river—it was breaking. 

He was drowning. 

His hands trembled violently as he poured water in a glass and drank it down in one long swallow, trying to even out his breathing, to control the beat of his racing heart. Fuck. Pekwarski had seen this coming, of course he had, the smug old bastard—that’s why he’d been trying to get Wes to stop for a minute, Wes could see it now. 

Flashbacks fractured across his eyes. People dying. His dad, the ring of the shot in the train car, the glass shattering, his body plummeting never to be found. Fox, the bullet, her body falling limp like a puppet with its strings cut. That guys Wes’ father had killed back at the beginning of his life as a killer, when he saw Wes in the Fraternity—the boy with the rat, he didn’t even know his name, fuck _fuck_ —

 

He gripped the edge of the counter and lowered himself carefully to the ground. He should call Pekwarski. The old man always knew what to do, what to say, to make it all a little bit better. 

But his phone was in his jeans in his room, and he couldn’t even get up, let alone walk all the way there and grab it, and _shit_ , face Brandon, who he’d just abused, goddamnit.

“I can’t fucking do this,” he said out-loud, voice thick. 

“Wesley,” Brandon rounded the island and crouched down, near but not touching. His face was wet—he’d washed it, maybe trying to wake himself a little. “God, Wesley. I’m sorry.”

“My dad’s dead,” Wes told him, stupidly. It wasn’t like the man didn’t know. But Wes’ brain was caught in some sort of loop that came back to that same conclusion over and over and over. 

Brandon looked wretched. “I know, Wes. I’m sorry I said that.”

A long, tense silence. Brandon settled down on the floor, far enough they weren’t touching, eyes sad. He took a deep breath, and seemed to steel himself. 

“What happened, Wes? Can you tell me?”

He shouldn’t. Brandon didn’t know anything, he was just a normal guy. A perfectly normal guy that had made a prison of his own body, but normal nonetheless—traumatized and lonely and broken, but a good man. 

He should have asked more questions. He should have _known_. He should have fucking thought more, not taken things at face fucking value. He should have realized Fox was playing him like a pipe, should have realized Sloan was using him as pawn, should have looked around. Why didn’t he ask more? He’d been so starved for attention, so eager to feel special, to be different, to be _something_. He should have, he should have, _he should have_. 

He hadn’t. 

“Shot,” Wes croaked. “He was shot. I was there.”

Brandon looked sick. 

“Wes, God. I’m sorry. Did they—did they catch the killer?”

“No. They won’t. He’s—“ _me_. ”not going to pay for it. Ever. My dad got killed and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

The older man shifted. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“There _was_ ,” Wes pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “There was, there could have been, if I had just opened my eyes, but I didn’t. I fucking let it happen.” 

Brandon leaned forward, earnest. “Wes, your father’s death was not your fault.” 

“How do you know that?” Wes demanded, angry. “How do you fucking know that, huh? You don’t know _shit_ , Brandon.”

“It wasn’t,” the man insisted, stubborn, frowning. 

“What the fuck makes you think that?”

“Fuck, Wesley, you’re a good person!” Brandon snaped, exasperated and angry, upset. 

Wesley laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. 

+++

Wes made a point out of never being near Brandon when it was daylight and they could be seen together. Wes made a point of always carrying a gun and knives with him everywhere. Wes made a point of wearing the headphones of his phone when he walked down the street, playing no music, so he looked careless and withdrawn when he was not. Wes made a point of locating all exits of a place as soon as he entered it. 

Wes did not think to make a point of telling Brandon not to approach him outside their building, because that would be difficult to explain without coming across as either a paranoid psychopath or a complete asshole who didn’t want to be seen with him in public. 

Wes _didn’t_ want to be seen with Brandon in public. He could, maybe, have come up with some vaguely logical-sounding reason that didn’t involve Wes explaining the complex world of assassination and fabric-producing machines of Fate and doom. But he could just _see_ how that conversation would go. It would start with Brandon’s pissy little eyebrow hitch and end in Brandon’s low cold hissing and furious eyes and then a metric ton of _hurt feelings_. 

This was how it came to be that one evening, Wes was happily, or as happily as he ever got, minding his own business in the subway station when suddenly Brandon was tapping his shoulder and smiling like he was having one of his good days. 

The problem was, Brandon had been oscillating between tentative and shy and ashamed and reluctant ever since he’d come onto Wes two weeks before. Like he couldn’t quite find that place he’d resided in before where Wes was safe and comfortable to be with. Seeing as Wes had nearly beaten the shit out of him, this was not surprising, but bizarrely, Brandon hadn’t taken any sort of problem with _that_. What he regretted was being so pushy with Wes about it that night, as he if thought somehow Wes might fear Brandon could try to rape him. 

Wes didn’t scoff at the idea because rape was never a joke, but _goddamn_. Brandon couldn’t lay a punch if he tried, let alone hold someone as bulky and muscular as Wes down and fuck him against his will. Intimidated was once thing Wes had never felt around this asshole. 

So. Problem was, Brandon hadn’t been himself in weeks, and now here in the subway, _magic_ , he even looked fine. 

Wes should have told him to fuck off, but then he’d have to deal with Brandon sulking, and fuck, Wes was _not_ going to be the cause of that, thankyouverymuch. Besides, the one day Brandon was feeling sort of upbeat? Let him fucking have it. He needed it. 

So Wes sucked it up, held himself especially alert, glanced around, kept an eye on people, and simultaneously maintained a perfectly civil and dare he say, even witty, conversation with his friend. 

Wesley Gibson, motherfucking multitasking genius. 

Brandon mentioned his sister, Sissy. Brandon _never_ mentioned Sissy, and Wes snapped all of his attention to him, stunned. 

“She’s moving back in with me, which I think is the better idea,” Brandon continued. 

“Do you?” Wes asked, genuinely curious. “I thought you said you wanted to have things under control for her.”

“I’m better than when she left,” Brandon replied quietly, eyes sad. “Maybe we need each other. Maybe she _should_ be with me. What happened—what happened before, it could have been avoided, if I had been paying attention. If I’d _looked_ at her.”

“I don’t know what happened before,” Wes reminded him, not so Brandon would explain but rather because sometimes on his good days Brandon forgot Wes had only been in his life for nine months, and not his whole fucking life. 

Brandon hesitated, “I nearly lost her. Because I’m selfish.”

Wes inclined his head. He had no way to dispute such a statement. Wes didn’t argue things he didn’t know about. In his estimation, Brandon wasn’t all that selfish; but hen Brandon had changed some, in the last few months. 

Maybe Sissy would be good for him. Better than Wes for sure, seeing as it was a challenge to be worse than some pricklish recalcitrant murderer with daddy issues. Lots of daddy issues.

Wes was thinking about that as they walked. He was thinking about that and about Sissy, and about Brandon, and listening to Brandon—

He didn’t see them coming. 

Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. 

By the time he realized his mistake they were surrounded. He instinctively got in front of Brandon, but there were two other guys behind their back. 

Adrenaline began pumping. Wes identified the threat: a gang of five, three armed with knives, two with guns. One of those was aimed at Wes, the other at Brandon. 

Wes brain focused on two goals: defeat the attackers, get Brandon out alive. 

Another fact: Brandon was useless in a fight. He was now also gripping Wes’ arm, tightly, as if he needed to keep him close as much as he needed the support for himself. 

“Well,” what appeared to be the leader of the gang gestured. “You guys know what to do.”

Wes knew _exactly_ what do to. He reached out his arm and grabbed Brandon’s coat, and slowly, carefully, made him back against the wall until he was stuck there with Wes between him and the gang. It wouldn’t keep him safe for long and if these assholes had two fingers of forehead they would know the way to stop Wes was getting to Brandon. 

The trick, then, was stopping them before they figured it out. 

Brandon was putting up his free hand, his grip tightening painfully in Wes’ arm. 

“We’ll give you out wallets, just—let me get it, don’t do anything stupid—“

“Aw, look at these fuckers,” the leader laughed. “So cute, man, lovebirds—“

Brandon was holding his arm, but fact: Brandon was weak. 

Wes was in motion. Brandon fell back, momentarily safe as the gang focused on Wes, as he met their leader, broke his nose with a well-delivered punch, threw him away with a kick to the gut. Time was moving like molasses, slow and lazy, confused. Wes surged up against the next attacker with the gun, the closest one. A bullet flew by his head, got lost in the alleyway. Wes grabbed his wrist, slammed the heel of his other hand against the inside of his elbow, felt muscle and sinew and fat ripple with contusion; felt bone snap. A howl. Two down. 

Wes twisted to avoid a knife, grabbed the guy’s arm from behind himself and brought him up close against his back. Slammed his head and elbow back at the same time, skull and gut attacked simultaneously. The knife dropped. Wes brought up a knee and let his foot fall brutally on the attacker’s knee bone; snapped it right out of place. Three down. 

A cursory glance. Brandon was against the wall, shocked and scared but safe. Everybody who didn’t know how to kill a man aimed at the threat rather than the weakness. Wes could take the bullets, unlike his friend, and thank God for it, because he got one. He didn’t feel the pain but the snag of his jacket and shirt suggested somewhere on the outside of his ribs. Es went down on a knee, punched the asshole in the groin; as he fell Wes surged up and slammed his fist against his solar plexus. Four down. 

The last one did have a brain, and he tried to get his knife on Brandon, who, to Wes’ surprise, ducked and dodged. He tripped and fell to the ground, but dragged himself up, terrified of being caught in the floor helpless. Wes slammed against the last attacker, felt him crash against the wall, pulled back to fall with all his weight on the of the dick’s ankles and snap it. One more punch to the kidneys. 

Five down; threat neutralized. 

Brandon was paralyzed. Wes grabbed his arm and steered him quickly to the end of the alley, pushing him when he stumbled, dragging him when he lagged behind. Brandon did seem to snap out of it a little while later as they entered their building, but unfortunately close to go from confused to downright fucking terrified. 

Wes had to come down to the high, and that always meant crashing. He was hurt, he could tell; he needed to set up the wax and collapse in the tub. He needed to call Pekwarski. 

“Don’t ever go through that alley again, you got me?” he said, and started down to his apartment. Brandon hesitated, and then frowned and followed, goddamn it. 

“What was that, Wesley?”

“That was an attempted robbery, _Brandon_.”

“You don’t I don’t fucking mean that.”

“No, I _don’t_ know, actually,” Wes mumbled, shrugging off his jacket violently. The high was receding; his ribs hurt. 

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

Brandon was not a stupid man. Wes didn’t need to look at his face to tell he was beginning to put things together. Wes’ strange travels, the absence of family or friends or even a steady job that provided income, the frequent unexplained bruises or cuts, the long unannounced absences, what little he knew of his father’s violent death. Wes’ fighting skills. 

Wes pulled up his shirt and looked at his wound. Brandon hissed. 

“It’s fine, just a graze,” Wes waved a hand at him. 

Brandon stilled. 

“You got shot,” he said hotly, grabbing Wes by the arm and taking him to the bathroom. “You got fucking shot, Wesley, don’t tell me it’s just a graze.”

“Okay,” Wes shrugged. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

Brandon was _livid_. His hands were jerky with anger as he snatched the first-aid kit from the bathroom wall and opened it. It really was just a graze, the skin only just split and no damage to the ribs, but if Brandon wanted to freak out about it, Wes couldn’t stop him. Brandon freaked out about the most bizarre things anyway, like the Frank Sinatra songs and mentions of the Catholic church. Weirdest fucking Irishman around. 

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asked again, more steadily now. 

_I was trained by a group of assassins’ to secretly hunt down and kill my dad because they knew he would never shoot me._

Maybe not. 

Wes shrugged, “In the streets.”

Brandon stared at him. “When did you live in the streets?”

Uh… I lived _on_ a street, does that count?”

Brandon gave him a look. It was one of those looks he gave when he thought he should be doing something to help Wes not be what he called ‘an uncivilized animal, for fuck’s sake, Wesley’. 

“Look,” Wes started, firm. “You’ve got things you don’t talk about, and I don’t pester you about them. Leave this alone.”

The older man looked dissatisfied, but he complied, and dropped the subject. 

But Brandon Sullivan was not a stupid man. 

Wes had taken advantage of a lot of things when he’d moved into this apartment. He’d set out to live as Wesley Gibson as long as he could manage, using his real name and his real identity, being himself, being his father’s son. He’d always known it wouldn’t last forever; it couldn’t. Fox’s name hadn’t been Fox; Fox’s name had been the name of a little girl whose father had been killed in front of her, a normal name for a normal girl, and the normal name had died with the normal girl when the Fraternity took her in. 

Wesley’s father’s name hadn’t been Cross. But name and man were dead, now, in all but memory and nightmare. 

Brandon was washing his hands thoroughly, mumbling about cleaning the wound and that it would sting, but he didn’t think Wes needed stitches. 

Wes didn’t know what still kept him here in this apartment, in this life, with this name. Some sort of melancholy for his father’s life, maybe, the way he always felt him around, like a ghost, when he came home to this apartment after an assignment. It wasn’t what his father had wanted for him, but Wes didn’t get to have that kind of life. He didn’t get to have that kind of life—and he didn’t have the right to involve anyone in his own. 

Wesley Gibson was a dead name, too. Soon enough, he would discard it as so many other things, meaningless, obsolete. 

His time was drawing to an end. 

+++

Sissy came home on a bright morning at the beginnings of summer. 

Wes was just leaving his apartment, bag slung across his chest, to catch an airplane to Moravia for a week-long submission to Pekwarski’s exasperated mother-henning. Wes grumbled and complained about it, obviously, but he was glad for the invitation. He really did need to sit down and talk his way through this whole mess with someone who wouldn’t think it was _a bit odd_ that he went around the world shooting people. 

So they caught him just as he locked his apartment door. 

“Oh, new neighbor,” she smiled at him. 

She was a pretty little thing, doll-like, blonde by choice. She had a sweet smile. 

“Yeah, I’m your brother’s personal plague,” Wes grinned, shaking her hand and shifting the heavy bag. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you. Brandon’s told me you’re a good friend.” 

Wes’s eyes slid to the man in question, who shrugged, embarrassed. 

“I do my best,” he offered, shrugging. 

Sissy grinned at him and ducked inside. Brandon lingered, glancing at his bag. Wes always forgot to let him know he was leaving. Most of the time he remembered when he landed on the other side of the ocean, and then he sent a text message. That was probably pretty dickish, on second thought. 

“I’m going to Pekwarski’s for a while,” he explained. “If you need anything, you’ve got my number.”

Brandon continued to look at him, turning his keyring in his hands. 

“Alright. But when you come back, I’d like to—I’d like us to sit a bit, and talk. About you, for a change.” 

Wes made a face. “Nothing interesting to say.” 

“You’re normally better at lying to me,” Brandon pointed out, neutral. 

Yeah, Brandon was not a stupid man at all. 

Wes smiled a little, and pushed his hair back. “I never promised to tell you the truth. I didn’t promise you anything, actually, except that I wouldn’t fuck you.”

Brandon inclined his head in agreement, but his eyes looked troubled. Wes slapped him in the arm and walked away, and even when the elevator got there and he turned around and Brandon was still there standing, like he wanted to say something more, Wes didn’t look at him. 

The first thing he did as soon as he got to Pekwarski’s house was stretch himself out in the couch and nap like a huge, inconvenient cat. Pekwarski grumbled about how he’d prepared a room for Wesley to sleep in, with an actual _bed_ , but Wes just borrowed deeper into a cushion and went to sleep. 

It was night when he woke up, and Pekwarski was sitting on an armchair reading the newspaper under the lamplight. Wes shifted and sat up, curling a leg under him. He rubbed his forehead with his knuckles, swallowing. They were silent for a long time after Pekwarski folded his newspaper and placed it neatly on the small table at his side. 

“Could I have stopped it?” Wes asked eventually, quietly. “I keep thinking… I keep thinking I failed him, but then—I can’t think of any way that I could have…”

Pekwarski laced his fingers. 

“What _could_ you have done?” he mused. “Fox and Sloan would not have simply let you go. They would have come for you eventually. Refusing or running was out of the question. You had no way of knowing the truth about your father; Robert made very sure of that. You couldn’t have—“

“Robert,” Wes interrupted, tasting the name. “Was that his name?”

Pekwarski nodded slowly. “Robert Crossing, originally. The name in your birth certificate was William. William Crossing.”

Wes turned the name over in his mind, testing it. 

The old man sat forward and pressed his hands together, searching Wes’ eyes until they locked gazes. 

“You did the only thing you could do, Wesley, the only thing you were allowed to do,” he said firmly. “Robert loved you dearly. He gave everything to keep you out of this life—but that was also because he didn’t trust the Fraternity, Wesley. He believed in the Loom. He believed in the Mission.”

He paused. 

“Now,” he started again, slowly. “There used to be other chapters of the Fraternity in other countries. Australia, England, Russia, South Africa, to name some. Sloan had those disbanded one by one, gradually, when he came into power. But—those soldiers of fate are still out there.”

“Working as vigilantes?” Wes asked wearily. “Mercenaries, murderers?”

“If that were the case you would have silenced them already,” Pekwarski pointed out. “The Loom fixes its mistakes.”

“No it doesn’t, it tells _me_ to fucking fix them.”

“Either way,” Pekwarski rolled his eyes. “I think it’s time you gather them up and start the Fraternity anew.” 

“But can I trust them?”

“The ones I know, yes, certainly. Many of them were Cross’ friends. I have stayed in touch with several. You could start with those, and work your way up.”

Wes rubbed his eyes. “I guess I do need the help.”

So Wes dedicated himself to that. He let Pekwarski lead him through it, handling the schedules, introducing him to people. He flew to Sydney, to London, to Saint Petersburg, to Buenos Aires, to Jakarta, Monaco and Berlin. He met more people that he’d thought he’d be able to remember. He heard ‘you look a lot like your father’ more times than he’d ever cared to. 

By the end of the third week, Wes felt like he’d been through a meat grinder, but the new chapters of the Fraternity in Australia, Russia and Indonesia were up and running, unearthing their old sources and researchers, and evenly distributing the load of names. Wes had attempted to convince or bully someone into being the new leader of the Fraternity, including Pekwarski, but he’d been unsuccessful. Even worse, most of the soldiers wanted him to take Sloan’s post, which frankly fucking terrified him. 

“What the fuck would I even do if I accepted, huh?” Wes complained one afternoon, sprawling out in Pekwarski’s couch. 

“Your duties would include coordinating the soldiers, distributing the names, and making sure the Loom is being properly translated. As well as ensuring none of the soldiers step out of line.”

“I’d be the fucking policeman,” Wes whined. Pekwarski slapped him on the head. 

“By the by,” the Moravian continued, sitting down with a cup of fragrant tea and kicking Wes in the ankle to get him to straighten up. “You did call your friend to let him know you were going to return later, did you not?”

Shit. He knew he’d forgotten something. 

“Well, I’m going home tomorrow anyway,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll just apologize.”

Pekwarski looked like he wanted to say something about that, but Wes’ phone started ringing. Two hours later he was taking a plane to Paris to help one of his new Fraternity soldiers with a bit of a hiccup. 

Brandon would keep. Probably. 

Unfortunately, his new French ally was not incompetent. The hiccup turned out to be a major problem, involving a whole mob organization. Wes had a dream of bringing down a huge Russian mob organization, but no such luck; it was a Chinese triad. To say Wes got his ass kicked three ways to Sunday is to put it mildly. A whole fucking day was lost with him in the wax, staring at the ceiling like an asshole. 

He and Jean-Luc were forced to go to ground for three days, before they could make contact with another French agent who was then able to bring in two Spanish assassins. The five of them did have a somewhat easy time of wiping the triad out, but it was eye-opening; Wes was forced then to admit that he really did need the help and support of a whole organization, and also, on a minor level, that having friends willing to put bullets in other people’s heads to save yours had its merits. 

Wes arrived at his New York apartment at the end of the fourth week, closing on a month of absence, keenly aware that he looked like shit. The wax had done its job on the major injuries, the broken ribs and the compound fracture on his arm, but Wes still had scrapes and cuts and he was severely bruised. He felt like an old man as he moved. Everything fucking creaked. 

Pekwarski had insisted he stayed, but Moravian was a strange fucking language. 

He’d been hoping to quietly slip into his apartment without being noticed and then calling Brandon later. He intended to come up with some sort of bullshit excuse about why he’d completely fucking forgotten to let Brandon know he was alive, and hope to God he didn’t have to put up with a truckload of hurting fucking feelings and teary eyes.

And then, because such was Wesley Gibson’s luck, the elevator doors opened and there stood Sissy. 

What were the fucking odds, huh?

“Oh my God,” Sissy gasped, eyes wide. 

“You should see the other guy’s fist,” Wes joked weakly, slipping by her on his way to his apartment. It was early in the day; Brandon would be at work. 

“What happened?” Sissy rushed at his side, frantic. “Oh God, you look awful, I think you need medical attention!”

“No, I got this,” Wes said firmly. 

“But—“

“Really, I’m fine,” Wes insisted, unlocking his door. Sissy was staring at him. “Uh, do you want to come in or something? I might have coke in the fridge.”

Sissy gave him a look. “I want to come in to make sure you’re fine. You look like someone chewed you out.”

“I returned the favor,” Wes assured, throwing his bag on the couch and shrugging out of his coat. Sissy watched him, putting her bag down on one of the chairs. 

“Did you get robbed? Brandon told me you could fight like nothing he’d ever seen.”

“Brandon hasn’t seen much fighting.”

Sissy laughed. “No, he hasn’t. But still. You look like you can hold your own.”

Wes waved a hand and lowered himself carefully to the couch, sighing when he was sitting down. He gave Sissy a long, assessing look. In another life, Wes would have been intimidated to be near her, Sissy with her pretty doll-like face and trendy clothes. In another life. 

“In a scale from one to ten,” he started, tilting his head genially. “one being indifferent and ten being ready to chew metal and spit nails, how angry would you say your darling brother is with me?”

Sissy looked at him. “Fifteen.”

Fuck. On the good side, Brandon was not a violent man. Or, at least, he lacked the skills to be a _competent_ violent man. Wes went to drag a hand down his face and paused, remembering the many bruises on his face. He probably did look like death warmed over. He let his hand drop to his lap instead, sighing. 

“Well,” he said, blinking slowly. “Maybe he’ll take pity on me.”

Sissy looked cynical. She sat down across from him, still giving him critical glances. Then, seemingly having decided that Wes wasn’t in imminent danger of dying, she relaxed back and gave him a direct, frank look instead. 

Wes was instantly wary. 

“Wesley, I wanted to thank you.”

Oh. Huh. 

Wes would have glanced away, but he didn’t. First, because he could tell it was important for Sissy to express her gratitude, and second because Wesley Gibson was past the days of shyness and reluctance. 

“Well, he asked for help, you know. I only met him halfway.”

“But that’s a lot,” Sissy said vehemently. “Because any other guy would have turned him down.”

_And punched him in the face, probably._

Wes could have asked her. He could have, and she would have answered, and she probably would have thought nothing of it. But whether Brandon had slipped or not in Wes’ absence felt, somehow, like it was a matter between Wes and Brandon. 

“How’ve you two been?” he asked instead, siding a little downwards in the seat so he could rest his head back. 

Sissy shrugged. “Better than the last time I stayed with him. It’s like he found something. I don’t know. We don’t yell at each other anymore.” 

“You yelled at each other a lot before?” Wes asked, sleepy. He was really tired. He wondered if Sissy was going to stay much longer; did she mean to keep an eye on him because of his injuries? The right side of Wes’ face was a large chain of black-violet bruises starting in the cut on his lip and climbing up to a scrape on his brow and temple. He’d gotten his head slammed against the pavement, he seemed to recall. 

“When we weren’t ignoring or avoiding each other,” Sissy said quietly. Suddenly she got up and moved to sit next to Wes instead. He made an effort to straighten, blinking heavily. 

 

“I’m glad you helped him that night,” she said softly. She hesitated, but finally put her small hand on his arm, light like a bird’s feather. “We’d argued and I left. And—then, when I came back the next day, he was… calmer. And we talked—“ 

She stopped, staring at Wes. He stared back.

“You saved us both you know,” Sissy said, squeezing his arm. “I was thinking, back then—I could have hurt myself. But when I came cack Brandon was different. 

Well, that explained the clinic. 

“Why are you telling me this?” 

Sissy didn’t smile at him; like her brother, it didn’t look like she was going to smile only because she lacked anything else to do with her face. Sissy had a pretty face, but the frankness made her much more attractive to Wes than a sweet false smile. In another life, maybe Wes would have thought about leaning over and kissing her. In a life where Wesley Gibson wasn’t an out-of-the-law assassin, and Brandon wasn’t his only friend. 

“Because you should know,” she said at length, as if she had just decided that herself. “You saved our lives, Wesley. You should know that.”

Wes stared at her for a long time. He thought of himself and what he’d gone through, and the life he’d been fit into; and he thought of Brandon and Sissy, slaves of their own weaknesses, struggling to raise themselves up and out of the trauma they seemed to relieve in a loop, together but never meeting. Two broken kids. 

He closed his eyes. 

“I think you’re both good people,” he murmured, shifting to let himself fall on his right side, the side of his chest that wasn’t severely bruised. Sissy got up to give him room, standing by the couch and looking down at him with clear hazel eyes. 

“We come from a bad place,” she said, and it sounded like she was echoing someone’s words, and listening to them for the first time. 

“As long as you remember you’re not there anymore,” he said, somewhat fuzzily, already half asleep. 

_You saved our lives._

_You kill one, you save maybe thousands._

It would have to be enough. 

+++

Wes jerked away at the sound of his doorbell. When he went to get up from the couch, his body kindly reminded him he looked like road-kill by abruptly starting to hurt _everywhere_. Cursing under his breath all the while, he stumbled to his feet, fished out a pistol from his bag and approached the door. 

“It’s me,” Brandon replied when Wes called out. 

Wes briefly considering keeping the gun around. Brandon sounded like he was foaming at the mouth. In the end he supposed that would just freak the poor bastard out, and went back to shove in his bag before he opened the door. 

The first thing Brandon did as soon as he was through the door was stare. And stare. And then, you got his, stare some more. 

“It looks worse than it is,” Wes offered. 

“I don’t think it _can_ be worse,” Brandon hissed. 

Wesley laughed. And then he stopped, because Brandon looked murderous as he ripped off his jacket and stalked inside the apartment. Wes caught the idea that he’d come straight from work, which was interesting, but he couldn’t quite fit together that puzzle piece right this minute. He needed to sit down. 

Maybe he was worse off than he’d thought.

He went over to the couch and lowered himself carefully to sit, cataloguing the pains to try and find what was wrong. He felt hot and sweaty, everything hurt, he was dizzy, short of breath. It couldn’t be the ribs; the wax had to have taken care of the worst of it. Could he be getting sick with something? 

Oh, fuck, Brandon was talking. 

“What?” Wes squinted at him, leaning forward to brace his arms on his thighs. His stomach was churning. He hadn’t had anything to eat at all today, and had slept all afternoon, so it couldn’t be that something had sat ill with him. 

Brandon came to stand in front of him.

“I said you look like shit, Wes. I think you need a doctor.”

“Look, I know it looks bad,” Wes sighed, rubbing his eyes. “But I got this taken care of already. I’m just coming down with something or some shit. A cold.”

“You’re coming down with a concussion, dumbass,” Brandon growled, crouching down to look at his face. “What happened to you, Wes? You said one week, and then I don’t hear from you for a month. You could have sent a word. I was worried.”

“What are you, my girlfriend?” Wes scowled.

A long silence. 

Brandon’s jaw worked. “I think you need to go to bed, Wesley. Can you walk?”

It turned out he couldn’t. Wes was as surprised as Brandon was annoyed. He tried to hide the wince when Brandon fitted his shoulder beneath his arm, but the Irishman stiffened so that probably didn’t work. 

Wes remembered, vaguely, that the Repairman had told him sometimes agents had wax-sickness a couple of days after having the wax treat major injuries. The two times Wes had been forced to treat major injuries with the wax—after his father’s death in Moravia and after he’d taken out the Fraternity in Chicago—he hadn’t suffered it, so he’d figured he wasn’t one of those agents. So much for that. 

“Wes—“

“’S fine,” Wes mumbled, fumbling with his jeans to get his phone out of his pocket and give it to Brandon. “Call Pekwarski. He knows.”

And then he fell asleep, or possibly lost consciousness. He wasn’t sure about it when he woke up later, hot and covered in sweat, tangled in his clothes. He tried to sit up and found he was weak and shaky. As soon as he was sitting he was overcome by some sort of vertigo, and had to stagger to the bathroom to dry-retch painfully into the toilet. There was nothing in his stomach to drag back up, which was probably a mercy. 

Brandon was unexpectedly there, crouching down next to him, a hand in Wes’ back. Wes leaned his hot forehead against the cold tile of the wall, coughing. 

“Easy,” Brandon murmured. He got up briefly to get a glass of water for him, but Wes shook his head. The mere idea of swallowing made him sick. 

“You’ve got a very high fever, Wes, you need the water,” Brandon insisted, helping him straighten up a bit. 

“What,” Wes swallowed a mouthful and coughed. “What’re you doing here?”

“Pekwarski said it’s some sort of Moravian fever,” Brandon said, putting the glass down. “He told me you’d need someone to look after you.”

“Let’s get him to the bed,” Sissy was suddenly at the bathroom door, looking worried and pale even to Wes’ unfocused gaze. “Can you lift him?”

“Oh,” Wes said fuzzily. “Bonding? Nice.”

“Come on, Wes,” Brandon said quietly, pretty much dragging him up by the waist and helping him stand. Wes couldn’t bring himself to correctly coordinate his steps; it felt like he was hanging off Brandon’s arm as he made the short trip from the bathroom to his bed. He was willing to let himself collapse into it, but Brandon grunted and lowered him gently down instead. Sissy hovered, face pinched. 

“Are you sure he doesn’t need a hospital, Brandon?”

“Pekwarski said…” his voice faded, and Wes had to struggle to focus again. “—til it breaks. He says he’s seen it before, never lasts more than two days at its worst.”

“Two days of a fever this high…”

Wes stopped listening. He was thinking, _I’m helpless_ , and _there’s people here with me_. He thought of the gun beneath the mattress of his bed, and how easily he could reach it if Brandon thought to do him any harm. Then he thought of how Brandon had just dragged him to his bed, looking concerned and pale. 

The gun. The concern. Something didn’t compute in Wes’ brain. He went for the gun, but he was clumsy, and Brandon thought he was toppling out of the bed and eased him gently back down, and Sissy reached out to stroke the sweat-damp hair away from his brow. Well. Fuck. 

“…you sure he doesn’t have any family we could call, he’s pretty bad—“

Oh, Wes knew the answer to that one. “Killed ‘em,” he mumbled, twisting away from Brandon’s hand when the man reached for the hem of his shirt. 

“What?” Sissy gasped. 

“Ignore him,” Brandon ground out, insisting with the shirt. What an asshole. Wes struggled to a sitting position and meant to shove him away, but Brandon wasn’t even swayed. “I want to give you a dry shirt, Wes, calm down.”

Wes wasn’t about to calm down; in fact, he was starting to panic. He really was completely helpless; he couldn’t even throw Brandon’s balance, and it wasn’t like the guy had the best balance in the known world. 

He went for the gun again, but Brandon caught him with an arm across his chest and sat down on the bed next to him, sighing.

“Wesley. Pekwarski told me to tell you that Cross got like this too, and he used to help him, and you’ll be fine.”

That meant absolutely nothing to Brandon. It was gibberish. But to Wes, _oh_. 

“He did?” he asked sleepily. 

Brandon stilled, as if stunned by the fact that had helped. “Yes.”

Wes hadn’t been talking about the old man, he’d been thinking of Cross. But suddenly explaining seemed like a daunting task. All Wes wanted to do was sleep. And get his gun. But sleep first, probably. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. He flopped back on the bed and twisted around until he was stretched out on his stomach. 

“What about the shirt?” Sissy asked softly. 

Brandon sounded tired. “It’ll keep.”

Wes didn’t hear them leaving his bedroom. Maybe they didn’t. 

He woke up several times all through that day, snatches of blurry consciousness that fused together with long shards of nightmares and half-darkened memories. Almost all of the times one of the Sullivans was around, trying to soothe him. He might have screamed a couple of times. He remembered crying at some point. He knew he’d told Brandon he’d killed his father again, and again Brandon has told him he was wrong, and Wes had complained that he never listened, and Brandon has complained he kept spewing nonsense and go back to sleep already.

Eventually, the fever must have broken, because Wes woke up to the soft golden light of morning, and Sissy curled up asleep in the bed next to him. She’d changed her clothes at some point. Wes could hear the sound of the tv in the living room. The air smelled of fresh coffee. 

He felt weak and shaky still, but that could be because he hadn’t eaten anything in a while. He dragged himself carefully to his feet, changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants, and made his way slowly to the living room. He would have loved a shower, but he didn’t think he could handle one right now. 

Brandon was sitting to the living room coffee table, typing away in a new laptop. His eyes snapped up as soon as Wes shuffled over. He looked tired, but alert. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked softly. 

“Like roadkill.”

Brandon huffed a short laugh devoid of amusement. “Well, it fits how you look.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Wes said, sprawling out in the couch next to him. Brandon moved over, turning to face him. 

“Do you think you can eat something?” 

“I could eat you.”

“Now who’s making unpleasant suggestions?” Brandon arched a brow. 

“Be nice to me, dickhead, I’m sick.”

Brandon sighed, “You’re like the little brother I never fucking wanted. Stay there and try not to die. I’ll make you toast.”

“No bacon?”

“ _Toast_ , and be grateful. The things I put up with.”

Wes slid slowly down to lie on his side on the couch and stared at Brandon moving through the kitchen doorway as he started on that promise of toast. His eyes slid to Brandon’s new laptop; the screen was open on his office email, and he was halfway through replying to a message. Wes stared at it for a long time. 

With a little effort, he sat up and stared at his hands in his lap. 

“Brandon, did you miss work to stay with me?” he asked.

The noise in the kitchen stopped as Brandon paused in what he was doing. Then it started again. Brandon didn’t show up in the doorway until he was done. Then he leaned against the doorjamb, looking at the floor. 

“It got really bad, at one point,” he murmured. 

Wes could only imagine how bad, because Brandon looked seriously rattled. God knows what Wes had said in his sleep; his subconscious was a fucking mine-field, and Wes half remembered what he’d said, caught between sleep and wakening, once: ‘I shot him, Brandon, I killed him, my fault he’s dead’. 

Wes could tell Brandon had a lot of questions, and he though they both knew he was never going to get those answers. 

“Would you have done something like this, do you think, a year ago?” he asked instead, thoughtful. 

Brandon took a long time to answer, clearly turning the question over in his head. 

“I don’t know.”

Wes smiled, “Good answer. Certainties are shit, Brandon. Always wonder. That’s one advice I can give you.”

Brandon looked at him for a long time, expression unreadable but eyes liquid and troubled. He had that thing, where his face and his eyes didn’t seem to agree. He was a vulnerable person, really. Wes wished he could do more to shield him, but he’d come along pretty late in life. If he’d wanted to protect Brandon, he’d have to go back in time and beat the shit out of a couple of people. 

Wes heard the sound of the toaster spitting the slices of bread. Brandon’s head turned, but he didn’t move from the doorway. 

“You’re really good at lying and hiding,” Brandon said. “And yet it seems like you’re always spitting truths and slapping me in the face with your bluntness. I can’t figure you out.”

Wes sighed. 

_It’s best for everyone that you don’t._

“You promised me toast,” he complained. 

Brandon dragged a hand down his face and went back into the kitchen. 

He came back bearing toasts and tea, because he argued Wes’ stomach wasn’t ready for coffee, which was just revengeful bullshit, Wes was sure of it. Brandon knew he hated tea. Why was there tea in this apartment anyway? This had to be Sissy’s fault. 

Brandon sat back down and got to work on that unanswered message, and as he worked and Wes swallowed tea, he said:

“Pekwarski called, by the way. He said William is there whenever you need him.”

Wes nodded, and Brandon seemed to think nothing of it. 

Now all he had to do was put Wesley Gibson in the ground. He watched Brandon typing away like a maniac for a while, almost dozing, and realized with a pang of hurt that he was going to miss the asshole, and all his drama-queen antics and all his troubles that he caused himself and only now was beginning to know how to climb out of, and how creepy he looked when he cried and how nice he looked when he smiled. 

“You’re a good friend, too, you know,” he muttered sleepily. 

Brandon’s fingers froze on the keyboard. 

Wes couldn’t interpret the look in his grey-blue eyes because he was falling asleep again, head rolling back against the back of the couch. He had a notion of Brandon’s hand on his arm, but couldn’t have confirmed it. 

+++

William Crossing existed. 

He had documents, a passport, bank accounts with money, a car and a boat (that he couldn’t fucking pilot, but whatever) and had recently acquired a nice little house in Italy. 

William Crossing existed and yet Wesley Gibson wasn’t dead yet. 

Wes knew he was lingering, and he knew he really fucking shouldn’t. Everything was ready. The Fraternity had officially designated him leader; he had duties to attend to, important fucking duties that required his full attention and his presence elsewhere. 

There was also just no logical reason to stay. That Brandon and Sissy had even bothered staying with him while he was sick spoke mountains about how far Wes thought they’d come. Maybe not Sissy, whom he didn’t really know, but Brandon sure had changed in the months of their friendship. He was even, tentatively, starting to date someone. 

Brandon didn’t need Wesley anymore, not really. He dropped by often, possibly out of habit, but probably because he worried about Wes. He really didn’t know what Brandon had caught and what he’d _believed_ from his feverish ramblings that night, but if he had believed half of what Wes had said, in all rights, Wes ought to put a bullet on him. He knew his face and he knew enough about his past to be dangerous. 

But that wasn’t going to happen. There were other ways to scratch Brandon from his life, and he knew them all. All he had to do was actually get up, pick up his bag, and disappear. He’d briefly considered faking his death, but finally decided it was just too much fucking trauma. He’d just quietly slip into the shadows, become a faceless person behind the curtains of the theatre of life. 

Yet he lingered. 

He’d told Pekwarski that he was staying until he healed fully, so as to assume his new duties with a clean face and a healthy body. The old man had accepted this at face value, despite the fact they both knew it was a bold-faced lie. If Wes had been worried about healing he would’ve packed his bags and dragged his ass down to Pekwarski’s. 

Another two months passed slowly and peacefully, one day different from the other only in the dates on the calendar. Wes had been removed from assignments, to allow him more time and availability to deal with other matters. He didn’t mind, though sometimes it was a really tedious job. 

The fatal blow to Wesley Gibson’s life came in the form of Sissy, showing up at his door with a small honest smile and asking him if he’d like to join her and Brandon for dinner for her birthday the next week. Brandon was taking her to her favorite sushi restaurant. Sissy didn’t even doubt that Wes ought to be there. 

“Oh, man, I actually don’t know if I’ll be here,” Wes said, moving over to let her into his apartment and scratching his head. “I might be on a trip. But if I can, sure, I’d like that.”

Sissy gave him a very theatrical pout. She really was very pretty. “We can leave it for when you come back.”

That hit him like a knife to the gut. 

“No, it’s your birthday. You guys go on out and have Sullivan bonding time or something.”

Sissy frowned a little, “That was the idea.”

Wes rubbed his face with his hands. This fucking girl and her fucking feelings and her fucking honesty. He wished he could explain to her that he couldn’t be seen out in public with them, clearly and obviously being friend with them, because that would only put them on the wrong end of a pistol’s barrel. 

“I’m not your brother,” he settled on, giving her a tired look. 

Sissy looked a little hurt, but she looked like she was gathering herself for one of those awful Sullivan confessions. Wes really didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this pair. Except maybe, a little, he _did_. 

“You are to me.”

Wes let his shoulders slump. 

“I don’t know what happened to your family,” Sissy said, putting her small hand on Wes’ arm. “But—“

“Just stop,” Wes said, standing up and shrugging off her hand. “Just stop, alright?”

Sissy didn’t say anything, just watched him with sad eyes as he picked up his keys and ushered her out of the apartment. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and took the stairs down. He needed to think. 

He walked for a long time, wandering without any real purpose or destination. Finally he found himself sitting by the river, alone in a bench, looking at river but paying attention to the people. All this people who just lived their lives, every day spending a little more time on things that didn’t really matter. 

People made their own cages. The Goth girl with the dark eye make-up, the tall elegant business man with his perfectly cut coat, the small little old lady with his Pekingese dog, the pretty Asian girl, no older than twelve, with her smartphone. Brandon and his sex addiction. Sissy’ endless need to be proved she was loved. They were really as free as you could get, short of removing yourself to an uncivilized island in the middle of the ocean and living there alone. And even then you’d be your own prisoner, one way or the other; slave to your inability to tolerate other people’s company.

Regardless of what Brandon and Sissy thought, Wes wasn’t free. His father had tried to keep him free, but in the end he’d failed. Wes was as much in his own cage as anyone else. 

But if it came down to it, though—Wes preferred Brandon’s and Sissys’ cages to his own. And there was only really one way to keep those separate. 

He got his phone and made the call. 

Then he got up and walked slowly back to his apartment. He spent the rest of the day getting his affairs in order, gathering the few things he was going to take with him when he left this apartment. Cross’ coats, which he had fitted to himself and now loved. A picture he found of Cross holding a baby, which he assumed to be himself, many years and sorrows ago. He left the weapons room and the furniture; Wes knew Pekwarski would send a Fraternity clean-up crew to pack away whatever Wes left behind here, so erase him completely from this place. 

Years ago, if you asked him, Wesley Gibson would have answered that he wasn’t the leading type. But sometimes the one thing you need to be a leader is the lack of desire to be precisely that. That and the will and ability to take charge of your own life, and of the lives of others. 

As usual on Thursday nights, Brandon came over to have dinner with him. Sissy, who’d become a late but welcome addition to their routine, was conspicuously absent. 

“She’s not angry with you,” Brandon offered when Wes put the other plate back in the pantry. 

“I didn’t ask.”

Brandon took a long breath, and released it slowly. “No, I guess you didn’t.”

Wes paused, and looked at Brandon over his shoulder. “I _never_ asked.”

The older man was staring at the countertop, calm but contemplative. “No. You never did. And neither did I. And that worked, for a while.”

_But not anymore_ went unsaid, but hung there in the air between them all the same. Wes continued preparing dinner, not because he needed to busy himself with something or because he was stalling. This was a conversation that was long time coming, and Brandon seemed determined to put it on the table that night. Wes thought of his bag, packed and ready to go, sitting on his bed in his room where Brandon could see it if only he looked. Once upon a time, Brandon wouldn’t have looked. But the Brandon Sullivan that was too self-absorbed to notice his sister was on the edge of suicide had long been left behind. 

The new Brandon Sullivan was not without its many flaws, but he wasn’t a cardboard cut-out of a human being anymore, and that was something, wasn’t it?

They were sitting and eating quietly when Wes finally lifted his head, pushing his broccoli around with his fork. 

“You know,” he started, and paused, searching for words. Brandon looked at him through his lashes. “You’re always worrying about Sissy, but what you used to do isn’t any less self-destructive.”

Brandon froze. Then, slowly, he put his own fork carefully down and sat back in his chair. 

“I do know,” he said quietly. 

“It just, it pisses me off,” Wes barreled on, dropping his fork noisily to the plate. “Because no one ever fucking forces you to do anything, Brandon. And you just, you’ve got all this shit you can do or choose not to do and you act like you never have any choices to make. You’re full of choices.”

“I know.”

Wes didn’t know why he was angry, suddenly, or why he was even angry with Brandon, who hadn’t done anything stupid. Today, anyway. He got up and pushed away from the table, taking a deep breath. 

Brandon watched him, almost immobile, calm, as if for once he was ready to be the rock and let Wesley fall apart. Wouldn’t _that_ be a fine fucking experience. 

“You have choices too, Wes,” he said at length, quiet. 

“No,” Wes laughed. “I really fucking don’t. Not like _you_.”

Brandon swallowed, but he looked at Wes in the eyes. “Who’s Pekwarski really, Wesley?”

Oh, smart Brandon. Wes felt like he was deflating. 

“He’s the closest thing I have to a family,” he said honestly. He sat back down on his chair, pushing his plate away, appetite lost. “He’s the only one who cares whether I’m still breathing.”

Brandon made a face. “I don’t know what you consider family, but I can tell you the things you and I have done for each other, some brothers wouldn’t do. Trust me on that.”

Wes made a vague gesture with his hand, and the silence stretched. 

“I’m not going to be here for Sissy’s birthday,” he said at length. 

Brandon nodded slowly, eyes downcast. “How long will you be gone this time?”

Wes smiled. “Same as last time, I guess? A week or four?”

The older man huffed; it was meant to be a laugh, maybe, but he didn’t smile, and he was not amused. “You have my number for whatever you need.”

Looking at him now, sitting there in the light of Wes’ dining room lamps, Brandon looked a lot different from the man he’d come begging for help that night nearly a year past. He’d put some weight on, which favored him, but also—something had relaxed in him, maybe. The lines of his face, the tense line of his eyebrows and shoulders, the wretched flatness of his eyes and lips. It was like the difference between a photograph and having the real, live person in front of you. 

“Brandon,” he asked quietly. The man looked at him. “have you ever wondered who you are?”

Brandon’s eyes were very blue in the light, and a little unfocused as he thought about that question. 

“Yes,” he answered after a long time. “And the answer always seems to be ‘I don’t know’. But then, maybe I have you to thank for that, Wes. That and many other things.” 

Wes smiled slightly, “A bruise or two.”

Brandon’s lips curled up, mocking and amused now. “Ah, yes. Good memories.”

“That’s the start line, I think,” Wes murmured. “the first step. Because from now on all you’ll ever do will be trying to find yourself, and yeah, you’ll make mistakes, but you know what? As long as you meet yourself at the finish line, none of those really matter.”

He looked up and caught Brandon’s eyes. 

“I don’t feel guilty about that anymore,” Brandon alleged thoughtfully. “I like to think I’ve put it behind me. I’d like to _hope_ you’ll put your own mistakes behind you, at some point, too.”

Wes inhaled a long breath and sat back in his chair. “I have to get up early tomorrow.”

Brandon recognized a dismissal when he got one. He tilted his head as if he wanted to say something else, in that strangely feline way he had, sometimes, with those thin lips and those thick-lashed eyes. 

“I’ll see you soon, then. Wes, when you get back… please sit down with me and let me help you through this. I owe you that at the least.”

Wes smiled. 

“Alright,” he lied. 

Brandon got up and made to walk away. Unexpectedly, though, as if a last-minute impulse, he reached out and squeezed Wes’ shoulder. 

“Be careful.”

“You kids be good to each other,” Wes replied absently. 

He didn’t watch as Brandon left, and didn’t get up from the table for a long time after he had closed the door. Finally, he took himself to his bedroom, stripped and got in bed. He laid there on the bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, feeling like a ghost limb the sensation of Sissy’s fingers tenderly stroking back his hair when he was sick, thinking of the very few times he’d heard Brandon genuinely laugh. Thinking, more than anything, bout the time Wes had laughed, and the dinners the three of them together used to have and Sissy singing to close the evening before they went to bed.

The next morning he left, and didn’t come back. 

+++

“Have you called your sister?”

“For the eleventh time: yes, I called Sissy. They’re going to meet us there. Will you stop obsessing over this?”

“It’s important, you heartless ken-doll,” Charlotte pursed her lips. “I don’t know why I keep you around.”

“Because I’m pretty,” Brandon suggested, sitting down and gathering his coat around him to stave off the frigid winter wind. 

“Because you’re tall and reach the pantry, most likely,” she countered, tightening the scarf around her throat and looking around nervously. 

“It’s still early, Char,” Brandon said, for what was probably the fifth time. “Will you sit down and calm down, please?”

“How are you this calm?” she demanded, crossing her arms and looking at him from the height provided to her by her truly ridiculous heels. 

Brandon made an elegant hand gesture. “I’m a heartless ken-doll.”

Charlotte gave him a shrewd look. “You’re lucky you _are_ pretty. There’s a coffee store across the street. Do you want a cup?”

Brandon was fine, but he could tell Charlotte needed something to do, so he nodded. Normally he would offer to go get them himself, of course, but Charlotte had been fretting since earlier this morning and if she thought getting coffee would distract her, let her buy the coffee of the world. 

He watched her go, the long curtain of her glossy straight hair flying vaporous around her like a halo. 

“She’s very beautiful,” an old man sat next to him, smiling kindly. 

“Yes, she is,” Brandon smiled politely. 

“Gilfriend?”

“Fiancée.”

“Lucky boy,” the man grinned, light-blue eyes bright. 

“Yes,” Brandon smiled despite himself. “I suppose I am.”

“So,” the old man tilted his head. “I suppose you’re past that addiction of yours, then?”

It was like the cold wind could suddenly bite him to the bone. He stared at the man, smile fading, heart racing. 

“We have a common friend, you and I,” he added. He had very intelligent and clear eyes. 

“Pekwarski,” Brand said slowly, quietly. 

“Anton,” the old man inclined his head and offered Brandon his hand. Hesitating only briefly, Brandon shook it. There was a long silence. 

“I brought you something,” Anton added, fishing in his pocket. He pulled out a little white envelope, and offered it to Brandon. Carefully, he took it and opened it. Inside was a single picture, like a snapshot taken without permission. 

Wes was looking at the camera holder as if he was willing to sit there and hold still, but wasn’t about to make the effort to smile. He was sitting on a tall stool to a table covered in target sheets, gripping one of them as if he had been interrupted from looking at the distance between what were very clearly bullet-holes. In the picture he was wearing the same things Brandon remembered him always wearing: old cargo pants, long and short-sleeved shirts layered together, a vest. It was like it had been taken the day before he’d disappeared. 

Four years past. 

“When was this taken?’ he asked shakily. 

“Right before I left, three days ago.”

“He looks good.”

“He is well,” Pekwarski nodded. 

A long pause. 

“You must have questions,” Pekwarski said gently. 

Brandon tore his eyes away from the picture and looked around at the park. Suddenly it felt like the people around were ghosts, incorporeal and meaningless. He remembered all too keenly the pain of waking up one morning to find the moving company emptying Wes’ apartment, only a week after he’d left. Sissy had tried to ask the movers what it was all about, whether they knew anything about Wes at all—but all she’d gotten was shrugs and blank faces. 

“Is he really alright?”

The old man looked pleased that this had been the first question in Brandon’s mind. 

“Like I said, he is well. Unhurt. Brash and bold as always.”

That made Brandon smile weakly. He relaxed a little back against the bench, looking down at the photograph. He gave Pekwarski a sidelong glance. 

“Will you answer any questions?” 

Pekwarski inclined his head, “Within reason.”

Brandon took a long, deep breath. “Why did he have to leave?”

“I think you know why,” the man answered, not unkindly. “You know Wes doesn’t belong to the same world you and your sister.”

Brandon’s jaw worked. He stared down at the photograph, at Wesley’s oddly boyish face. At the target sheets laid out in the table in front of him. 

“He told me,” he swallowed. “He told me he killed his father.”

Pekwarski nodded slowly. Brandon felt like a mouth had opened in the ground beneath the bench and was trying to suck him down into the entrails of the earth, to trap him there forever. His breath stuttered. 

“It’s a very long story, and I cannot afford to give you the details,” the man sighed. “But suffice it to say he did not know, then, that he was his father. He’d been told he was a very bad man who needed to be stopped. He knew only at the last moment, when it was too late.”

Brandon couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror of that. He knew Wes had been deeply traumatized about it, but back then he’d thought those were the broken-hearted feelings of a boy who’d lost his father, twisting Wes’ words. The fact that such as not the case was—staggering. 

“God,” he whispered. His hands were shaking. 

“You are a smart man, Brandon,” Pekwarski said, leaning forward to lace his hands. “You know the world doesn’t fix itself. Someone has to fix it.”

Brandon swallowed thickly. “But why—why—him? Why Wesley? He’s just a kid, he’s not—he’s a good person. He doesn’t deserve—“

He couldn’t go on. He stared at the photograph. 

“It’s not about what he deserves,” the old man said gently. “He’s taken on a duty, to safeguard what other people deserve—peace, safety, to be able to keep on living without fearing the darkness.”

Brandon looked at him, shaking. “It’s not fair.”

The man’s eyes closed. “Not to him. Not everyone gets fairness in life, Brandon, as you know. But with what he does, some do.”

“But why?” Brandon asked, sitting up and facing the man, suddenly angry. “What is it, he’s—he’s some sort of hit-man? An assassin? Why would he _do_ that?”

Pekwarski’s eyes opened and fixed on him and Brandon felt like his stomach had just fallen out of his body, and left behind a great gaping void. 

“So that innocent people like you and Sissy can live in peace,” the old man murmured. “So that you can walk the streets at night and not fear someone will slit your throat open. Because men like the one who abused you as a child should pay for what they have done, and the system is flawed.”

Brandon sank back against the back of the bench, staring in front of himself and seeing nothing. 

He glanced back down at the picture in his hand, and then to Pekwarski. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

Pekwarski sighed. 

“Because I think you deserved to know. Wes will do nearly anything to defend the innocents, because that’s what he _does_. But you, Brandon, you have no such responsibility. And you saved Wesley’s life.”

Brandon stared at him, speechless. 

“You did. He might have saved yours in the process, but the fact you and Sissy exist, Brandon? The fact you are simply innocent people, with no malice, no intention to hurt anyone? That saved _his_ life.”

Pekwarski patted Brandon’s arm.

“I thought you deserved to know that. That you matter. That you’re not alone. But more importantly, Brandon, I wanted to give you that picture. Because you’re the only one here, alive, today, that knew Wesley Gibson. You need to remember him. You’re the only one who can.”

Brandon slid the picture inside the white envelope and tucked it carefully into the inside pocket of his coat. He swallowed. 

“Will you—“ he hesitated, licked his lips and started again. “Will you tell him—he can come back anytime?”

The man smiled, getting up. “No. I won’t.”

Brandon closed his eyes. “And he wouldn’t.”

“No, he wouldn’t. But you remember. That’s all I want. For someone out there in the world to know Wes is here, protecting you.” 

Pekwarski settled his flat cap over his silver hair, nodded, and walked away. 

Brandon sat there, fingers laced on his lap, long legs crossed, until Charlotte came back with two coffee cups and sat next to him, her sweet perfume vague and charming in the intense cold of the winter. 

“You look thoughtful,” she commented, cuddling against his side for warmth. 

“Just thinking of things I’m grateful for,” Brandon murmured, settling his nose against the silk of her hair.


End file.
